… and wealth are the 5th key influences on worldwide history in the 1740-1914 period we study.
How many petticoats and how long your skirts were indicated class and status. Wearing rich or imported fabrics meant wealth. Dictates of Court, particularly the French Court which led fashion through much of this time frame specifically told women of nobility how they were to dress – Napoleon made sure by sending dolls to women so they could copy what the dolls were wearing.
Lower class (and later in America, women of the western regions) had versions of high class fashion that was altered by our other factors (function, place, ideology, access).
(Sketches: class differences through fashion – French girl vs French working girl about 1765)